The auto industry is running full throttle to get fuel-cell vehicles on the road in three years, but consumers probably won’t be able to buy them until at least 2008, and it may be years later before they sell in significant numbers.
Fuel cells are more efficient and cleaner than internal-combustion engines, but the auto industry has major hurdles to clear before they are ready for mass production.
First, they have to fit them into automobiles, and at two to three times the size of a conventional engine, including ancillary hardware, that is not easy.
Second, fuel cells run best on hydrogen, which won’t be widely available for years and requires more careful handling than gasoline. Currently, there are fewer than 10 hydrogen refueling stations worldwide, according to a research paper by the Worldwatch Institute.
Then there’s the cost. General Motors estimates that producing a fuel cell powerful enough to run a car or light truck today would be two to three times as expensive as a gasoline engine and transmission, which runs roughly $5,000.
Despite the obstacles to making them affordable and consumer friendly, the auto industry sees fuel cells as the long-range alternative to internal-combustion engines that burn fossil fuels.
Internal-combustion engines have hundreds of moving parts and ignite gasoline or other fuel in a continuous cycle of small explosions to generate power.
There are no moving parts in fuel cells, which propelled NASA’s Apollo moon rockets in the 1960s and 1970s and power the space shuttle today.
In the fuel-cell stack, the main component that consists of several cells stacked in a series, hydrogen mixes with oxygen. The resulting reaction converts chemical energy to electrical energy, generating power to drive electric motors.
Except for the whirring of air pumps and whine of electric motors that propel the vehicle, fuel cells don’t generate noise like conventional engines, eliminating mufflers.
More important, they don’t generate harmful emissions such as hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen, two byproducts of internal-combustion engines. With hydrogen-powered fuel cells, water is the only byproduct. Water vapor is released into the atmosphere like exhaust gas from a regular engine.
Fuel cells are two to three times more efficient than internal-combustion engines at converting energy to power. That means that instead of going 25 miles per gallon of gasoline, for example, a fuel-cell vehicle will go 50 to 75 miles.
Unlike battery-powered electric vehicles, which need frequent recharging, fuel-cell vehicles carry fuel in a tank like conventional cars and trucks.
Argonne gets involved
One believer is Michael Krumpelt, manager of fuel-cell technology at the Argonne National Laboratory near southwest suburban Lemont. An Argonne team developed the first automotive application of a fuel cell in 1992, a 30-foot bus.
“It has potential to be superior to anything that’s out there,” Krumpelt said, predicting fuel cells will be available to consumers in five to 10 years. “They will be cleaner and more efficient, but they will have to offer something to the public that makes them desirable.”
Energy efficiency and environmental friendliness won’t be enough to convince the masses, however. Fuel cells will have to compete with internal-combustion engines on cost.
“They will have to price it reasonably,” Krumpelt said. “Otherwise, who will buy it?”
Fuel cells have fewer parts than internal-combustion engines, making them more attractive from a production standpoint. Krumpelt estimates that the fuel cell, air pumps, fuel system and other hardware add up to less than 500 parts versus more than 3,000 for a conventional engine, and it is in step with the auto industry’s move away from mechanical systems to electronics.
“Potentially, it’s less expensive to manufacture, and that’s what the auto manufacturers see,” Krumpelt said.
Automakers also see fuel cells as an opportunity to branch outside the auto business. Instead of only manufacturing and selling vehicles, they would be building mobile generating stations capable of supplying enough electricity to operate houses or small businesses.
Because hydrogen probably won’t be available except on a limited basis for at least a decade, the auto industry is looking at converting gasoline, methanol and other fuels as interim solutions.
Methanol is easier than gasoline to convert to hydrogen. When methanol is heated to about 300 degrees Centigrade, it decomposes into a hydrogen-rich gas. However, it is more toxic, and concerns that it will contaminate ground water likely “means methanol has become a dead issue in the U.S,” Krumpelt said.
New fueling stations would have to be built for methanol or gas stations would have to convert to methanol, which costs about half as much as gasoline but has only half the energy. So it takes twice as much methanol to go the same distance as gasoline, a wash on price.
Gasoline is universally available, but Krumpelt says it is “chemically much more complex to reform into hydrogen than methanol. It’s still very challenging.”
Reforming gasoline into hydrogen onboard the vehicle generates carbon monoxide, which is poisonous, and carbon dioxide, cited as a cause of global warming.
Major automakers have working prototypes of fuel-cell vehicles, and most run on hydrogen. Several are involved in the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a government-supported demonstration program with headquarters in Sacramento.
The vehicles are fueled at a hydrogen station at the headquarters that has one above-ground tank a spokesman describes as “a big Thermos bottle.” It stores liquid hydrogen at minus 250 degrees Centigrade (minus 423 Fahrenheit). The hydrogen is heated and converted to a gas before being fed to pumps that refuel the vehicles.
A recent trip to Los Angeles to show off the vehicles illustrates where fuel cells are today. Instead of driving the fuel-cell vehicles the 400 miles to Los Angeles, they were loaded onto trucks and hauled there. Most have a range of 150 miles or less on a tank of fuel, and there are no hydrogen stations along the way.
Production to begin
Nevertheless, Ford and DaimlerChrysler say they will start producing small numbers of fuel-cell vehicles in 2004.
When Ford begins building fuel-cell vehicles in 2004, it will produce fewer than 1,000 units a year because of cost and limited supply of hydrogen.
“We will primarily target fleet buyers as the first consumers,” spokesman Brendan Prebo said. “It will require people to have access to hydrogen or to create a hydrogen refueling station.”
Ford’s prototype is a Focus sedan with a direct hydrogen-powered fuel cell. The floor under the front seats was raised to accommodate the fuel-cell stack, and the Focus FCV weighs 3,800 pounds, about 1,200 more than a conventional Focus. Much of the additional weight is from two hydrogen tanks in the rear, which take up most of the trunk, leaving a narrow space for cargo. Despite fuel capacity of 22 gallons, the FCV’s range is just 100 miles.
Ford also is studying gasoline and methanol fuel-cell reformers, and Japanese affiliate Mazda has built a methanol-powered prototype.
Ford Motor Co. Chairman Bill Ford, great-grandson of the company founder, predicts that “fuel cells could end the 100-year reign of the internal-combustion engine. In 25 years, fuel cells could be the predominate automotive power source.”
DaimlerChrysler, which will invest $1.4 billion in fuel-cell research by 2003, has two vehicles in the California demonstration, the NECAR 4 and 4A. Both run on hydrogen, but the former uses liquid and the latter compressed gas.
Both NECARs (New Electric Car) are based on the Mercedes-Benz A-Class, a four-door hatchback not sold in the U.S. The fuel-cell stack is in the floor, allowing the prototypes to seat five and have normal luggage space. Mercedes claims a top speed of 90 m.p.h. and range of 280 miles. The company’s latest fuel-cell prototype, NECAR 5, runs on methanol reformed into hydrogen.
DaimlerChrysler spokesman Max Gates says the fuel the company will use in its first fuel-cell passenger vehicle, also due in 2004, is still a question, despite pronouncements by Chairman Juergen Schrempp that it will be methanol.
“We are fuel neutral at this point,” Gates said. “We’re not sure which fuel we’ll be using, but we’re not doing anything right now with gasoline.”
Bernard Robertson, a DaimlerChrysler senior vice president, said on a visit to Chicago this year that “fuel cells have great promise, but they will not be ready for mass market for at least a decade.”
Even then, he added, fuel cells may coexist with hybrid powertrains–small internal combustion engines teamed with electric motors, such as the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius.
GM says it won’t be among the first to offer fuel-cell vehicles, but it plans to be the first to produce 1 million by building models that run on low-sulfur gasoline, a fuel not yet available. GM will use onboard reformers that extract hydrogen from gasoline.
GM says consumers won’t buy fuel cells if they have to go out of their way for hydrogen or another fuel, so it will use gasoline as a “bridging strategy” until hydrogen is widely available.
“You can kid yourself by doing a small number of vehicles for fleets. The real test is when you have to deal with the real, hard problems of consumers,” said Byron McCormick, co-director of GM’s alternative propulsion research. “Unless you sell millions of these, you aren’t going to clean up the environment.”
GM expects to offer a fuel-cell vehicle for fleet use by 2005 and for retail customers by 2010.
GM began to look at gasoline in 1998 and by 1999 dropped methanol from consideration to concentrate on gasoline as the interim fuel until hydrogen is available.
“If we intend to have hydrogen as soon as possible, why would we encourage people to invest billions into something you’re going to replace? It doesn’t make sense to develop something you’re trying to obsolete,” McCormick said of GM’s decision to drop methanol.
GM’s first running fuel-cell vehicle is the HydroGen1, an Opel Zafira minivan made in Europe and not sold in the U.S. The HydroGen1, which runs on hydrogen, lacks air conditioning because engineers are wrestling with the great amounts of heat generated by the fuel cell.
GM unveiled its first gasoline-based fuel-cell vehicle last week, a Chevrolet S-10 pickup scheduled to hit the road as a demonstration vehicle early in 2002. It is adapted from a battery-powered S-10 and retains the electric version’s battery pack and electric motors. The hardware to reformulate gasoline into hydrogen weighs about 120 pounds and fits under the hood of an S-10.
GM projects the fuel-cell S-10 will have 50-percent higher fuel economy than a conventional 4-cylinder model, current rated at 19 m.p.g. city and 25 m.p.g. highway with automatic transmission.
Toyota is collaborating with GM and Exxon Mobil Corp. in developing low-sulfur gasoline for fuel cells, but Toyota spokesman John Hanson says: “We’re not as committed to [gasoline] as General Motors. We’re keeping our options open, and we’re looking at a wide range of possibilities, including hydrocarbon fuels.
“We are working with GM on that technology, but we are working on other technologies as well. Not all of our work on fuel-cell technology is in conjunction with GM.”
Toyota has shown two fuel-cell vehicles, the first a hydrogen-powered RAV4 and the latest a Highlander that runs on low-sulfur gasoline. Toyota expects to unveil a demonstration vehicle in California this year.
Other manufacturers with demonstration vehicles in California include Honda, which has two versions of the FCX-V3, based on the EV Plus electric vehicle, Hyundai and Nissan. All use gas hydrogen.
In July, Honda announced a temporary solution to the lack of hydrogen. It opened a hydrogen production station at its Torrance, Calif., research center, using solar power to extract hydrogen from water. Honda says the station can produce enough hydrogen to operate one fuel-cell vehicle for a year.
Technology making progress
If current fuel-cell vehicles sound primitive, Krumpelt says fuel cells today are about at the same level of development as gasoline engines were in 1910 or 1920, and technology is improving rapidly. The fuel cell Argonne developed in 1992 for installation in a 30-foot bus was “about the size of a bus,” he recalls, and now they are small enough to fit under the hood of some vehicles.
Argonne and the automakers are developing onboard reformers to extract hydrogen from gasoline and other fuels, such as ethanol (derived from grains and biomass) and natural gas, and Krumpelt points to considerable progress since 1992.
Argonne’s first reformer, used in the 1992 bus, was the size of a 55-gallon drum. Now, it is the size of a four-gallon container.
GM says it is developing three new gasoline reformers per year, and each generation is smaller, more durable and less expensive. One engineer estimates that the current cost of a reformer is one-tenth what it was three years ago.
Because the technology is changing so quickly, David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., advises auto manufacturers to go slowly in introducing fuel cells. GM erred by introducing the EV1 electric car before there was consumer demand or a network of stations for recharging batteries.
“Right now there is a very high rate of improvement in technology. It’s important not to go to production too early, because then you’ve invested enormous amounts of money in obsolete technology,” Cole said. “It’s better to wait until the curve of improvements starts to flatten out. You can’t go to high-volume production too early. It doesn’t make economic sense.”
When will consumers be able to buy fuel-cell vehicles?
“It’s probably eight to 10 years before there’s a reasonable chance of it being economically viable. Even then, it’s questionable,” Cole said. “We’ll see a lot more hybrids before we see a lot of fuel-cell vehicles.”
Krumpelt says the discovery of new or improved fuels could speed widespread use of fuel cells. Wood was the main energy source 200 years ago, but it was replaced by coal, then oil and natural gas, which were followed by nuclear and solar power.
“It is logical that sometime in the future, mankind will find some new form of energy,” he said. “We don’t know what it is, but we will find it. You can’t just extrapolate the future from what is currently known.”
